Hahaha the young "genius", Carl, at the genius bar that waited on me got an earful today. The 90 day warranty from the LAST bad phone ran out 7 days ago and he said I would have to pay $329.00 to get a replacement.

I got a hellified chest going on cold, drove 2 hours to get to an Apple store, that's located in a mall...slap full of weirdos walking around and I wasn't having it.

"So that' where we at...Carl???" I'm 7 days over on a 90 day warranty from the last screw up....and know I'm supposed to get my billfold out??" Right, Carl?!?!

I've never had an iPhone… all my daughters do… I've stayed with Droid. Daughters have had some problems but mostly due to their inability to hold onto a phone… even iPhones don't do well when they come into direct contact with concrete... from various heights...

Opinion,untempered by fact,is ignorance.

There are some who do not fear death... for they are more afraid of not really living

I DO prefer Macs, I like the way they did the OS, a number of other things… but for many years they have used the same processor…

I have three Macs… two are 8 years old, still function fine (can't update them anymore, so one is not highly used, but IS still used). One is a fairly recent purchase and has all the bells and whistles. It is superb.

Since I bought the two earlier Macs, I've had 4 Dell laptops and two desktops at work… they just have not held up as well. When they are working, performance-wise there is little difference between the brands. I also have an Acer mini laptop that I've had since 2010… it is OK, but has always been pretty slow.

For the graphics I require, Mac is "it". However, PhotoShop works on both types.

I do have a lot more problems with PC-type machines than Macs, some of it imposed by DoD.

I'll never "change" from preferring Mac, unless Apple makes a drastic change in philosophy. There are some poor, misguided, tortured souls who prefer PC's… may they someday become enlightened...

Opinion,untempered by fact,is ignorance.

There are some who do not fear death... for they are more afraid of not really living

Here's my .02To me PC and MAC are Ford and Chevy. You will have your die hard fans on either side. Two similar things that do similar things. I grew up around PC and I'm comfortable with it and I don't want to learn a new OS structure etc. My cousin is the opposite. Apple's the answer - what's the question?

I think the original issue was a computer that won't run the new Lightroom either because of OS or hardware. Vista does stink and I'm sorry for your misfortune. Like suggested, try updating: Control Panel\System and Security\Windows Update\check for updates. If that doesn't solve your problem you can upgrade your OS. It sounds intimidating but isn't once you get started. You have two upgrade options. 1:Clean install Windows 10 for ~$120 for home version. 2:Clean install Windows 8.1 ~$100 and upgrade to Win 10 for free. As for hardware, the cheapest/easiest is to add RAM. 16GB of RAM cost ~$60. It is drop dead simple to add. You will just have to make sure you get the RAM that will work in your computer. You can go to manufacturers sites like Kingston and the site will help you find the right RAM. I don't know all the specs of your computer but the processor and hard drive you have are probably just fine. An upgrade to an SSD hard drive in the future is possible but not necessary. The video card is probably OK too. Rendering pictures doesn't require lots of video horsepower. Rendering video is different. For around $200 you can have a heck of a machine. If you are set on getting a MAC, then that's your fault. I had to throw in a zinger somewhere but seriously they are just fine. I just think they are overpriced for the hardware you get and what you are paying for is the OS and feeling that it will never die or break.

Whichever operating system you use, my advice is to get the largest external hard drive you can afford to store your photos on to keep your computer hard drive lean. Hundreds/ thousands of RAW and high res TIFF and JPEG files can quickly consume hard drive space. I got a 4TB HD that I use solely for photo storage.

As for Mac vs PC, I use both. Both have their pluses and minuses. Yes, Mac is more expensive and less upgradeable. BUT... I will say my experience has been that the Mac OS has been far more trouble-free for me. I've never had any viruses, spyware, etc, and it never crashes, seldom ever freezes up, etc. The display resolution looks nicer too. I'm no computer expert unlike a few of our OT brethren here, so take my advice for what it's worth. I just like my stuff to run hassle free. I get that with our 3 Macs, but have never had close to that with any PC I've ever had, whether at home or at work.

As for Lightroom, I've never found the program itself to be very taxing of system resources, but large file size photo storage is the issue.

Ted

Money can't buy happiness... but it's much more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than on a bicycle.

I was sorta misleading on the hard drive suggestion. SSD's are too
expensive for mass storage. Regular drives are more
economical. I use a relatively small SSD (128, 256GB) OS drive. It
will boot the machine and have all the programs on it like Lightroom
etc. I have a separate server that has 4TB of storage in a RAID10. Not everyone needs a separate server computer. Like Ted said the biggest external drive you can afford is all you need. I'm big on securing my data that's why I have a separate computer that handles the RAID. There are external hard drive type RAID boxes like the Drobo. I also use Carbonite to back up my data.

I have a 256GB Surface Pro 3 and really like it. I also have a 1TB external hard drive I use for my personal stuff. I understand the new Surface Pro 4s have more RAM and a better graphics processor, but the Surface Pro with Windows 10 is outstanding. The surface pro 4s may be a good choice because the resolution on the screen is amazing (2736x1824 at 267 PPI) so it may give you some photo-editing advantages, but you'll probably have to sacrifice on the side of processing power and RAM from a true video/photo editing machine. Good luck, Sky.

Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement. -Winston Churchill

In my experience, External hard drives are much more prone to failure. Partly because they often get moved around and partly because using usb seems to cause more errors on the drives. I have seen 10 times more drive failures using external usb than having an internal sata drive.

They have esata which from my use is very reliable but usb is just a problem waiting to happen. Especially if u are reading and writing alot.

Plus sata is faster and virtually all mothetboards have a few extra sata ports on them.

IMO if u are using a external usb drive to store data u better be backing it up often. Its just a matter of time til u lose it.

I am helping Sky spec one out. We are looking at a 480 gig ssd, 2 tb storage drive and a 3 tb backup drive to backup the other two.

Lifetime warranty and excellent customer service don't mean a thing when your gun fails during a zombie attack.

I have had Dells and Compaqs that were a pain to upgrade just because there wasn't much room left in the case or ports on the motherboard. Best of luck to you.

Skylar if your computer case can fit one SSD (OS) and two 3.5" drives (storage), I highly recommend running the two drives in RAID1. This will help with data retention just in case a drive fails. The RAID can be run by the motherboard itself.

Skylar if your computer case can fit one SSD (OS) and two 3.5" drives (storage), I highly recommend running the two drives in RAID1. This will help with data retention just in case a drive fails. The RAID can be run by the motherboard itself.

Two disk drives?

The one I have now, has one available and there is a dummy door for a second, but I have never installed one.

I keep one external hooked up all the time doing regular backups. I usually get about 3 years from them. Mostly use Western Digital. Avoid Seagate drives...

I also keep 3-4 drives in rotation and run a clone to one of them every other month or so. I keep one offsite at a friends house just in case. A few years ago I had a bad month, lost three drives. One in the machine and two backups. You can't have too many backups.

Skylar if your computer case can fit one SSD (OS) and two 3.5" drives (storage), I highly recommend running the two drives in RAID1. This will help with data retention just in case a drive fails. The RAID can be run by the motherboard itself.

Two disk drives?

The one I have now, has one available and there is a dummy door for a second, but I have never installed one.

So I should have two of these?

ST said you two were looking at 3 total hard drives. I assumed 2 internal and 1 external. Reading your comment says I was wrong and you will have on internal and two external drives. I may have over-complicated the simple.

Problem with Raid1 on desktop computers is often time the built in Raid controller is not reliable. One of the hard drives will drop off and most of them don't have a way to rebuilt the array easily. Can be a real pain in the rear. Also depending upon Raid as a backup is a mistake. It is a redundancy not a backup. The point of Raid is so that if you loose a drive you machine can keep working til you can fix it so your users don't go offline. I have seen whole arrays just fail completely with total data loss.

Using storage spaces in Windows 8.1 and 10 is a really neat tool that is very reliable and much easier than setting up a raid array in the bios. For home PCs and home servers it is an great reliable and inexpensive way to set up redundancy. For enterprise use, I would spend the money for a enterprise raid controller.

I have two Server 2012 boxes at home that I am using Storage spaces on. One of them has a mirroring array with 10 hard drive that is 20 tbs. the other is a single parity array with 20 tbs. Both of them have been running for over 1.5 years 24/7 and I have not had a single problem yet. Every single desktop motherboard array I have built has dropped a hard drive at some point and I have not been able to get it working again, even though the HD tests fine. And I have probably done 20+ of them. I have built a dozen or so enterpise arrays and when a drive drops out it can easily be replaces and the array will rebuilt itself

On the subject of Seagate drives suck, that is not really accurate. I have literally used 100s of both Seagate and western digital drives. Truth be told I have seen a higher failure rate with WDs than Seagates, and in my experience the Seagate perform a little better overall. We had a server that ran 24/7 for 7 years with two 10,000 seagates in a raid 1. They were still working fine when we took it out of service. I have 18 seagate 3 and 4 tb drives in my two servers running for over 1.5 years and have not had one of them fail yet. And they are just desktop drives. I keep expecting it to happen anytime, but so far so good.

They are all going to fail. But both brands make great drives. Now I use Seagates pretty much exclusively and have no regrets.

Back to external drive. It is just not the best way to go, if you can put the drives in your case you will be much better off both performance wise and reliability wise. But the comment about Dells and other proprietary systems not allowing expansion is true. That is why you woudl be better off buying from a local computer shop that can build you a PC that is expandable and customizable.

Lifetime warranty and excellent customer service don't mean a thing when your gun fails during a zombie attack.

Hmm, I may have to change my opinion of them. I must have been fortunate, as I have used hundreds of them over the last 10 years and not had very many issues. I have 8 of the 3 tb ones in a couple surveillance computers right now. They are 3 or so years old, having data written to them 24/7. They are probably a different model though, as they are the surveillance designed drives.

Thanks for the info.

This kind of stuff is why I backup my important stuff 5 and 6 times. You just cannot rely upon 1 or 2 backups to be good enough.

Lifetime warranty and excellent customer service don't mean a thing when your gun fails during a zombie attack.

I am always leary of online backups. They get hacked often and u really have no idea whats happening with your data. But thats just me.

I have a raid 10 2012 server and mirrored NAS in my house. Then I buried a cat 5e wire out to my shed 50 yards from my house where my backup 2012 server is in raid 5. Then i have a wireless bridge to my folks house a few blocks away where i have a mirrored NAS. I am a data protection nut.

Lifetime warranty and excellent customer service don't mean a thing when your gun fails during a zombie attack.

I was able to get a bunch of free copies of server 2012 from microsoft from server classes i took. So i built a couple servers for home. I use windows 7 as a dvr for tv shows and we store movies on them and my wife has near a terbyte of pictures. We have computers hooked up to our tvs so we can watch our movie library and tv shows from our 3 tvs.

We dont store data locally on the computers everything in on the server. Plus it gives me a place to practice and train for work.

Lifetime warranty and excellent customer service don't mean a thing when your gun fails during a zombie attack.

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot create polls in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forum